In this manuscript, multi-drought indices from station data across mainland China has been developed at 0.1 deg resolution for the period of 1961 to 2022. The authors utilized six drought indices such as SPI, SPEI, EDDI, PDSI_China and SC-PDSI through several meteorological parameters. Products derived from the present approach have been compared with other available datasets/products. This long-term high-resolution dataset would be useful for drought management and planning. The manuscript is well-written with reasonable analyses. However, following comments may be addressed to make it more suitable.

Section 2.2: It is suggested to elaborate missing data handling, as it is one of the tricky part of the observational data while considering several meteorological parameters.

Why angular distance-weighted interpolation (ADW) is considered for the higher-resolution gridding? Is it better than optimum interpolation method and state-of-the-art objective analysis techniques? Considering variability of meteorological parameters taken in this study, does ADW reasonable for all parameters?

Why authors have not considered multivariate drought indices including precipitation and soil moisture? An example of such long-term global datasets can be found at https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/7/4/044037  

Yangtze River basin may be highlighted in any one figure for the convenience of the global readers.

How empirical constant of expression 8 was determined. It needs to be elaborated.

What is the role of land use/ land cover on drought indices? Is it possible to introduce any new index considering land use/land cover change?

It is suggested to prepare an uncertainty map for each drought index. It would be vital for end users.

This study produces a long-term and high-resolution meteorological drought dataset with six indices in China. This dataset applied the high-density meteorological station data and incorporates a complete framework. Further, this dataset has been tested and proven capable of capturing the typical drought events across mainland China. This high-precision, multi-index dataset offers valuable potential for further studies on drought patterns and trends, as well as for early warning applications in drought monitoring within China. The manuscript is well-written and logically organized though some details need to be further explained and modified.

Some detailed suggestions and comments are listed below:

1. Section 2.1 Data: Many datasets are used in this study, while their description in this section is unclear. It would be better to provide a clear classification of these data sources and distinguish between the meteorological data from CMA, CHM, and CN05.1, as all the three datasets seem to originate from gauge observations in China. Further, the CRU dataset is based on global gauge observations with fewer gauges in China. The authors would clarify why these datasets are included in the consistency test.

2. Line 181: FAO-56 Penman-Monteith equation is designed to define the reference crop ET (ET0) using a hypothetical reference crop with an assumed height of 0.12 m. Here, the authors used this equation to calculate PET rather than ET₀. I suggest they provide an explanation of PET and ET0 and clarify the calculations used for each.

3. Line 280: why was August 2022 chosen as the node of the 2022 severe drought in the Yangtze River basin? In fact, this drought lasted from summer to autumn. The cumulative water shortage in the months following August may be worse.

4. Line 324: the low consistency between CHM_Drought with CN05.1_Drought is attributed to the poor performance of sparse sites. Does this imply that the data processing method (e.g., interpolation method) affects the accuracy of the production of drought datasets?

5. Section 4.4: While the correlation between VPD and NDVI is discussed, NDVI is influenced by various factors beyond VPD, and NDVI data itself may contain uncertainties. It is unclear why the correlation between VPD and NDVI can be used for the consistency assessment of VPD.

6. Some in-text citations are not listed in the Reference section, the authors should check it out.